Green Sand Molding

Green sand molding remains the most diversified and economical casting process and is used on the following manufacturing lines:

Squeezer

Cope and Drag

DISA Automatic

Our Squeezer can handle castings up to 100 pounds. The Cope and Drag can handle castings up to 125 pounds.

We have four green sand squeezer lines with the flexibility to utilize customers’ existing pattern equipment. These lines have aluminum gas furnaces with independent crucibles as well as Pillar Mark VIII induction furnaces for brass melting. Non-leaded alloys poured here are:

Eco Brass

Federalloy

Silicon

Aluminum

Manganese Bronze

Highlighted by our DISA Match 130 machine, our green sand foundry combines precision and repeatability with the flexibility to meet your needs. Whether its 1 mold or 100,000, the DISA is versatile enough to accommodate your job and produce up to 120 molds per hour. Using the latest in melting technology, its automated pouring operation yields accurate, consistent results every pour.

AFW’s sand system has been upgraded to feature automatic sand delivery to all our green sand molding centers. Our ability to continuously analyze the green sand inside the muller allows us to send sand recipes specifically set for any of those production lines.

Each molding line has its own hopper with a setting specific to the compactability required for optimum mold quality. Our system is able to monitor sand levels in all active molding hoppers and the hopper will call for sand when the low level indicator has been activated. This activation triggers the demand for the muller and a 3000 pound batch is made with the required preset sand recipe.

The muller program monitors the sand inside the muller as it is processed during the cycle time and displays batch weight, sand temperature, and the amount of water added during the cycle. As the sand is processing its compactability will be continually monitored. As the cycle time ends the sand will be released from the muller if it falls within the preset upper and lower control limit. If it falls outside the range an alarm will notify the green sand team that there is an unacceptable batch in the muller which must be dispositioned.

Throughout the day our quality tech takes multiple samples at different points of the sand distribution system to make sure that the readings are consistent with those that the muller is producing.

Once the sand has gone through the molding process it is transported by conveyors to our Didion LC-40CH which removes tramp material and screens out any foreign substances. The sand then enters the drum where it goes through a set of teeth to break down large chunks of sand. As the sand spirals down the drum it makes its way through ¾” holes which separate large foreign material from the sand itself. Finally it is sent through a 1/8″ screen to pull out the last of the foreign objects before the sand is sent back to the holding tank where it will be used again in the molding process.